


to my eyes leap other horizons

by Cinaed



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Pirates of Leviathan
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen, Magic, Pirates, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27147965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/pseuds/Cinaed
Summary: Their first night aboard the Harvest Moon, the crew discovers a stowaway. (He would argue he isn't, for the record.)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 47





	to my eyes leap other horizons

**Author's Note:**

> I did not expect my first D20 fic to be an Alistair Ash fic, but here we are. :D Just a fun little post-canon story for you all.
> 
> The title comes from the poem "Other Horizons" by John Pudney and the song is adapted from a sea shanty called "The Coasts of High Barbary."
> 
> This contains references and spoilers for Sophomore Year as well!

The first night on the Harvest Moon, Cheese curls up in the crow’s nest to settle in for a good night’s rest.

The ship rocks gently under him. He’d kind of worried that he might end up seasick or something embarrassing, because Leviathan is so big that you can’t really feel the movement under your feet, not like here on his ship. But he’s not, so that’s good. Cross that off the list of things Cheese is worried about. He wonders if Ayda has a list too. She seems like someone who likes lists.

Cheese tucks his new spellbook against his chest.

Then he hears the shouting.

He can’t tell if it’s alarmed shouting or annoyed shouting, but he climbs down to check anyway.

By the time he gets down, Marcid has emerged from the lower decks, hauling a familiar figure by the scruff of his neck. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a stowaway,” he drawls.

Myrtle glides forward, a slow smile spreading across her face. “You know what we do with stowaways? We drown them.”

“What? No! I would prefer not to be drowned, thank you very much,” Alistair Ash squeaks. “You guys invited me to your crew!” Still dangling from Marcid’s grip, he starts rummaging around in his pockets. “I brought snacks, but then I got tangled up in some rope down below, and I tried shouting but I guess not loud enough, but--”

“Relax,” Marcid says. Alistair doesn’t take his advice, but then, Marcid _is_ still dangling him an inch or two off the deck. “Nobody’s getting thrown overboard tonight.” He pauses, exchanges a look with Jack. “Well, unless the captain says so. And Cheese owns the ship, so I suppose that means he’s entitled to an opinion as well.”

Jack’s quiet for a moment.

“You said I could join your crew!” Alistair reminds him, sounding slightly desperate.

“We did,” Sunny agrees. “The Pirate Code--”

“Says that you don’t leave crew behind,” Cheese choruses with her. He makes a mental note to ask Sunny for a copy of the code. It feels like something he should have memorized, considering he’s a pirate now. Oh boy, that's still crazy to think about. He's a pirate now! With his own ship! “I mean, we did invite him to join the crew! We definitely did that, and we can’t exactly do, um, take backsies.”

Jack nods slowly. “That we did. Marcid, put him down. The lad stays.”

“Oh thank you!” Alistair’s worried grimace melts away to a smile. “You won’t regret this!”

“I already do,” Myrtle murmurs, but Cheese is pretty sure she’s joking.

Bob claps her hands as Marcid lowers Alistair to the deck. “Gosh, this is so exciting! We’ve got you now, and I bet when we rescue Cheese’s brother, he’ll want to join the crew too!”

She steps forward with a rustle of her wings. Her laugh rings out, high and joyous. Any remaining worry disappears from Alistair’s face and he stares the way everyone does at Bob when she adds, “Though you’ll have to fight alongside us this time to get into a song about our next adventure!" She pauses and wrinkles her nose. "Or is this still the same adventure as before? 'Cause we’re rescuing Cheese’s brother, which we found out about during our _first_ adventure, and--”

She keeps talking, but Cheese gets distracted by the thought of Spaulding joining the Harvest Moon. Wow, Cheese hadn't even thought that far ahead. He was too stuck on the whole rescuing Spaulding and the other gnomes. He didn't think about what would happen after that. But if Spaulding did, this would be the best pirate crew ever. Of all time. In the whole of history, no one else would ever have the cooler crew!

He crosses his fingers and hopes.

* * *

“You really have to pay Bill Seacaster every time you do a spell?” Sunny asks Alistair, not long after an exciting skirmish against a Crescent Moon trading company ship that involved making quite a few jerks walk the plank.

She’d gotten a little distracted during the fight, watching Alistair cast a spell that built sparkling armor of frost and ice around him. It’s not just her, right? A devil with flames for eyes when he’s not wearing a disguise, choosing the protection of ice? Sure, it’s magic so it won’t melt, but that’s a little weird. Cool, but weird.

It’s even weirder to watch him count his coins afterwards and mumble, “Oh boy, well, I guess I have my bracelets if I need to do another spell…. Spellwork on a budget until we get some treasure, I suppose!”

Alistair looks up from where he’s tucking his coin purse away. He blinks at the question. “Well, yeah. How else could I do magic?”

“Uh, lots of ways! You could devote yourself to Jane Wren-- no pressure, not pushing her on you, she’s just super cool and can give you spells for free as long as you follow the code and stuff. Or you could learn magic out of a book like Cheese! Okay, I _think_ you have to pay for those spells too, but just like once and then you just have to pay for materials? So it seems cheaper than the warlock thing. Well, cheaper’s a bad word, it sounds like I’m saying-- but you know what I mean!”

“Uh huh,” Alistair says, who looks like he doesn’t know what she means. Oops. “Well, Jane Wren sounds really nice for a god--” His eyes flick briefly over towards Myrtle, who sent quite a few soldiers and sailors today down to Umberlee. “--but you have to be smart to be a cleric or a wizard, and like I said before, I didn’t have much brains even before Whitclaw ate them.”

“Oh, right,” Sunny says. She’s a little crestfallen. A good pirate should be able to help their crewmate, and she just thinks this warlock thing is more complicated than it should be. She pats Alistair’s shoulder. The pirate code says you should encourage your mates at every opportunity, so she adds, “Well, you did good today! The way the armor froze that guy's hand and made him yell after he hit you? That was great.”

“It was?” Alistair looks surprised. Then he smiles. “It was! Though not as cool as when you hooked that other guy and threw him onto Marcid’s trident. I've never see Marcid look surprised before!”

“That was pretty cool,” Sunny agrees. She gets excited like they're still in the fight, just remembering all the great moves and spells everyone did. “Oh, did you see Cheese use his new spell? That thunderwave knocked like three dudes into the ocean! It was _awesome_.”

“It was pretty impressive,” Alistair says. Maybe her questions have gotten to him though, because he looks a little wistful as he says it.

Sunny pats him on the shoulder again.

* * *

Bob can tell when someone is feeling a little low.

Usually Cheese is up in the crow’s nest, but now that they rescued his brother and all the other gnome kids, he’s usually down on the deck, talking to Spaulding and staying close to him, like he doesn’t want Spaulding to leave his sight ever again. Bob gets that. She almost asked Trixie to come along with them on their piratical adventure, except she knew Trixie would want to stay at the Gold Gardens after all the recent unpleasant stuff. Getting your soul stolen would make a homebody out of anyone! And also Garthy would be upset at losing two of his best performers. So she didn't ask, even if she sure does miss seeing Trixie's beautiful face every day. 

But now Cheese is on the deck with his brother, and Alistair is the one up in the crow’s nest, a crumpled red figure who looks sad even from a distance.

He gives a surprised little twitch when she flies up and says, “So I noticed you seem kind of sad.”

“What? Me? Sad? No.”

Bob gives him a doubtful look. His voice wobbled a lot for someone who claims not to be sad. 

Alistair sighs. He’s got his knees up to his chest and his chin on his knees. “I’m not sad. I just-- well I want to be a real member of the crew, you know? This is so much better than being on Bill’s, even if Myrtle still says she’s going to toss me overboard most days, but I want to pull my own weight and, um--” He holds up his wrist. It’s bare of the shiny bracelets on his other wrist. “It sort of feels like having to figure out if you can afford to pay someone for your spells in the middle of a fight slows you down? I’m beginning to think I made a really bad deal. You guys and the Bad Kids do so much cool magic, and it looks a lot easier, and I just…. I want to be part of the crew. A useful part. You all are so nice.” He still sounds a little surprised when he says that last bit, like he still expects them to be mean. 

“Well,” Bob says, but Alistair adds quickly, “And Sunny already suggested I try to be a cleric or a wizard, but I’m not exactly a book reading guy, you know?”

“Oh, you don’t have to be _smart_ to do magic,” Bob says, laughing.

Alistair says, “No, not if you’re a warlock, which is why--”

“No, silly,” Bob says. She reconsiders. “Well, yeah, you don’t have to be very smart to be a warlock, but you don’t have to be smart to be a bard, neither!”

Alistair blinks. “What?”

“I mean, my dad’s pretty smart, he figured out a way to get into Heaven without dying, twice, but I’ve met a lot of bards at the Gold Gardens. Some of them weren’t that bright and they could still do plenty of spells! And there are different kinds of smart anyway. Some folks are smart with emotions, and some with money, and some with magic, and some with other stuff!”

Alistair stares at her. He’s got a look on his face. It’s kind of like the expression people get whenever they’re about to say, “Oh my god, you’re Barbarella Sasparilla Gainglynn!” except she’s pretty sure Alistair already knows who she is. They’ve been crewmates for a couple weeks, after all.

He opens his mouth. Shuts it. Opens it again. He sounds almost tentative when he says, “I don’t know much about music, other than some songs.”

Bob waves that aside. “Oh, that’s okay. I can teach you! I know how to play a lot of instruments. We just have to find the right one for you.”

She’s surprised when Alistair scrambles upright and practically jumps off the crow’s nest to give her a hug. She catches him, because it wouldn’t be very nice to let him go splat when he’s trying so hard to be a good pirate and a good crewmate. And because she really likes hugs.

Alistair is very warm, like he’s got hellfire in his veins. So is Trixie, actually, whenever they hug and cuddle and do other fun stuff, so maybe it’s not a devil thing and just a tiefling thing. Either way, he turns out to be a good hugger. “The devil’s own luck,” he says. Tears trickle down his face, but the illusion can’t stop the heat of the flame to tickle Bob’s neck. “I guess I’ve got it now. So, um, where do we start?”

“Oh.” Bob thinks, trying to remember how her dad taught her music. “Well, first we should sing together, make sure you’re not tone deaf or anything like that! Then we can start with something real simple, like drums, so you can figure out rhythm.” There’s a chest full of musical instruments down below deck. She knew it was a good idea to bring them along, even if she usually just lets her voice do the magic.

Alistair lifts his head. He wipes at his eyes. “Right. Singing. I can do that.”

He clears his throat. His voice is a little rough at first, but it gets stronger as he sings. And he isn’t too bad, if Bob says so herself. She’s pretty sure she nailed this whole bard idea. Or at least she’ll keep her fingers crossed that she’s right.

“Look ahead, look a stern,  
Look the weather in the lee,  
Blow high! Blow low! And so sailed we.  
I see a wreck to the windward  
And a lofty ship afire,  
A-sailing down all on  
The coasts of good old Spyre.”

Below them, one of the gnomes they rescued that isn’t Spaulding picks up the melody and starts singing too in a clear high soprano. Soon everyone’s joined in, even Marcid, though Bob can tell he’s hoping no one will notice.

When the song ends, Alistair takes a deep breath. Then he beams and punches the air.

“Oh wow. Oh wow. I’m gonna be a bard!”


End file.
